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Book review: It’s Your Move, Wordfreak!

To spot an interesting cover amidst stacks of clichéd chick lit novels is like getting a whiff of fresh air in a stale library. Falguni Kothari’s book with a smartly illustrated cover easily catches the eye. The plot is catchier—lovers in the making, over online scrabble games. At the outset, the book promises to be an intelligent read in its genre. I’m tempted and seduced.

The narrative has a certain tempo. Right in the beginning, Falguni has laid out her premise well—‘Wordfreak’ and ‘Worddiva’ have been on a head-to-head word war on their online scrabble board for months. They are getting ready to meet for the first time, offline, after several sessions of sensually titillating, pun-filled conversations online. Alisha Menon is an independent, smart and shrewd lawyer but a reticent soul when it comes to socialising. Aryan Chawla is the loaded, handsome hotshot architect who makes green homes, appears on Page 3, mingles with the Bollywood crowd and has women swooning over him. The Mills & Boon setting is complete.

There’s a generous dosage of witty word play in the dialogue. Metaphors, hyperboles and puns dot Falguni’s writing and make for an engaging read. They also save the prose from drawling in parts. You are put off, at times, by the nicknames invented for Alisha though—Aryan calls her Sunshine and her BFF Diya calls her Lee-Sha. Mind you, she’s etched out to be a cynical and practical 28-year-old no-nonsense sort. It’s a bit hard to digest that she responds to those junior college-scrapbook pet names.Falguni must have been besotted by M&B. The sex scenes come across as a fervent tribute. Our protagonists are established as the match-made-in-heaven pair—their mind-body compatibility is incredible and, well, unreal. More than halfway through the book, you realise that everything is still hunky dory. But things have to go awry for the happily-ever-after end, right? Enter Bollywood melodrama.

The author now looks for inspiration—there’s a Punjabi wedding that could have been a scene lifted out of a Karan Johar movie; a filmy fisticuff; a hitherto unknown past cropping up; endearing characters that needed some more outlining. The galloping pace until now falters for the first time. Hereon, the story demands heightened willing suspension of disbelief. The protagonists suddenly don’t behave in tandem with their traits. You somehow feel cheated. The climax doesn’t matter anymore because you are a seasoned reader. You can smell predictability. This is a Disney world, characterised by teary-eyed happy endings.

What lingers though is the deconstruction of the hackneyed romantic plot. Falguni definitely scores brownie points for that alone. I’d rate this book a 3 on 5 only for taking a unique look at the ‘rich boy-meets-headstrong-girl’ story.